Critical Discourse Analysis

Course leader: Olena Peftiieva

Home Institution: Mariupol State University

Course Overview

Critical discourse analysis is meant to get acquainted students with the analysis of socio-political written text taking into account the larger real-world context with all of its complexity. It is meant for the professionals from various spheres. CDA is a democratic approach which takes an ethical stance on social issues with the aim of improving society.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course students should be in possession of theoretical knowledge of Critical Discourse Analysis and a practical technique to demonstrate critical approach to the text read; perceive hidden messages; correlate discourse and society (including social cognition, politics, and culture); improve writing skills.

Tentative Course Content

Critical Discourse Analysis 

№

Date

Course Content

1.        

19.07.21

The acquaintance with the course plan, seminar and lecture procedure, assessment criteria,

and learning outcomes.

Lecture 1. Language registers / functional styles of language and basic genres

2.        

19.07.21

Lecture 2. Classification of Language Vocabulary. Literary (terms, archaisms, barbarisms, foreignisms, occasionalisms), Neutral, Conversational (slang, jargon, professionalisms,

dialectal words, vulgar words, nonce-words).

3.        

20.07.21

Lecture 3. Syntactical Expressive Means (inversion, detachment, suspense, enumeration, repetition, parallelism, chiasmus, asyndeton, gap sentence link, climax, bathos, ellipsis, break-in-the-narrative, represented speech, rhetorical question).

Lexical Stylistic Devices (metaphor, personification, simile, epithet, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, meiosis, litotes, allusion, antonomasia, irony, zeugma, pun, oxymoron, periphrasis, euphemism, antithesis).

4.        

20.07.21

Lecture 4. Journalistic style. Architectonics of a Newspaper Article. 

5.        

21. 07.21

Lecture 5. Critical Discourse Analysis of a newspaper article.

6.        

21. 07.21

Seminar 1. Headline, dateline, byline, leading paragraph, body of article, inference. 

7.        

22. 07.21

Seminar 2. Body of the article. Inverted pyramid. Usage of parenthetical phrases.

8.        

22. 07.21

Seminar 3. Subjectivity and Objectivity.

9.        

23. 07.21

Seminar 4. Insinuations and Presuppositions.

10.     

23. 07.21

Seminar 5.  Omission and Deletion.

11.     

26. 07.21

Seminar 6. Foregrounding and Backgrounding.

12.     

26.07.21

Seminar 7. Topicalization: agent-patient relations in sentences.

13.     

27. 07.21

Seminar 8. Modality.

14.     

27. 07.21

Seminar 9. Contextualized interpretation.

15.     

28. 07.21

Seminar 10. CDA of an article.

16.     

28. 07.21

Case Study 1: Reading article 1, listening its CDA. Discussion. 

17.     

29. 07.21

Case Study 2: Reading article 2, listening its CDA. Discussion. 

18.     

29. 07.21

Case Study 3: Reading article 3, listening its CDA. Discussion. 

19.     

30. 07.21

Group project: Layout of a new approach to CDA

20.     

30. 07.21

Module test.

21.     

30.07.21

Summing up the results

 

Instructional Method

Course includes five lectures on Stylistics and Critical Discourse Analysis, ten seminars; individual case study; group project, and module test (42 academic hours).

Required Course Materials

Each student will be supplied with two e-books ‘Mass Media Critical Reading’ and ‘Stylistics’; internet resources.

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

is based on

European Assessment Scale

Classroom Activities

Scores 

Study the information “Critical Discourse Analysis” p. 67-80 from the book 

“Mass Media Critical Reading “. Add information from the reliable sources about CDA.  Written paper

15

Verbal Presentation of Individual Scientific Research

15

Case Study: each student presents CDA of an article to the groupmates at the end of

the course.

20

Individual Work of Student: Study the information p.7-33 from the book “Mass

Media Critical Reading” and  compile  bulleted points to elicit  from while

presenting CDA  of a  newspaper article

10

Participation in Discussion

10

Module test (written multiple choice test based on theoretical and practical information) 

30

Total

100

 

European Assessment Scale

Rating
in scores

Rating
a national
scale

Rating
scale ECTS

Rating

Explanation

90-100

Perfectly

А

Perfectly
(excellent performance
with small number errors)

82-89

Good

B

Very good
(above average
some mistakes)

75-81

С

Good
(overall correct fulfillment of certain
significant number of errors)

67-74

Satisfactorily

D

Satisfactorily
(not bad, but with significant
number of defects)

60-66

E

Enough
(satisfies
minimum criteria)

35-59

Unsatisfactorily

FX

Unsatisfactorily
(with the possibility of re-assembly)

1-34

F

Unsatisfactorily
(with the obligatory repeated course)